My dwarven paladin Gardain reached 3rd level in 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons this weekend. And I am retiring him. I start teaching Sunday School next week and I need the time I spend playing D&D to instead prepare my lessons.
I have now played 4th Edition long enough to have a firm opinion of it. The short version is that it has potential but is not yet ready for prime time. The long version is behind the lj cut.
Character Generation
Third Edition D&D had a cobbled-together system of spells for wizards and clerics, feats for fighters and rogues, and skills for bards and rogues to define the characters' abilities. Fourth Edition dumped that and replaced it with a unified system of powers. It is a marvelous and simple system that cuts down on meaningless arithmetic. It allows a player to create a new character in less than an hour.
Leveling up a character takes only a few minutes, most of which consists of erasing some numbers on the character sheet and replacing them with slightly higher numbers without even a die roll. Surprisingly, I find this disappointing. The feeling that I was guiding the development of a character according to his hopes and dreams has been lost. At each level the player chooses a new power from a small list; unfortunately, the list offers little real variety, simply replacing one power with a slightly stronger version. The only real choice offered is when the character gets to choose a feat from a longer list at every even-numbered level.
Another down side for you non-mathematicians out there is that the powers are written in a space-saving jargon rather than in plain English.
So now that D&D has a unified character-class system, it would logically follow that multiclassing would be easier than ever, right? Multiclassing and prestige classes were one of the strengths of Third Edition. Too bad Wizards of the Coast wanted primarily to
prevent abuse with 4th Edition multiclass rules. Players can use feats to dabble in other class abilities, but true multiclassing is gone. I tried the Ranger multiclassing feat on Gardain. The result was a paladin with an increased Perception skill and a forgettable version of a Ranger's "Hunter's Quarry" ability. It would have been as useful to have spent the feat to buy increased Perception as a skill directly. That was the maximum Ranger abilities Gardain could gain until 4th level. Supposedly, multiclassing works better after 10th level, if the player spends four of the six feats earned by 10th level on multiclassing, and if the character didn't multiclass to Ranger or Warlock, because the designers forgot to multiclass key abilities there. That is carrying delayed gratification a little too far.
The species in 4th Edition are superbly developed. I avoided the flashy new species of dragonborn, eldarin, or teifling. Gardain was a dwarf, one of the most boring mythological species, known for being short, stubborn, and tough. Gardain's racial abilities to carry heavy loads and heal himself easily during combat felt balanced, served a use in the party, and gave the character an excellent feel of dwarven sturdiness. His personality developed a strong pride in his toughness: "My beard may be burning, but I hit that evil cleric!"
Combat
While 4th Edition greatly simplified the character system, it retained the full complexity of the 3.5 combat system. In fact, it added to the complexity with extra combat-related conditions such as "marked". The Player's Handbook's chapter on combat is well written and makes a good effort to explain all the details clearly. For example, page 277 has a nice list of what it means for a character to be Blinded, Dazed, Deafened, Dominated, Dying, Helpless, Immobilized, Marked, Petrified, Prone, Restrained, Slowed, Stunned, Surprised, Unconscious, or Weakened. That list illustrates the enormous quantity of detail in 4th Edition combat. The amount of arithmetic in 3rd Edition combat was a
running joke that 4th Edition does nothing to change.
The grid system was introduced in D&D 3.5, so I cannot blame it on 4.0. However, the 4th Edition campaign at The Family Game Store was the first time I played a significant amount of combat on a grid map. The grid fails. Under 3.0 rules, a party could move in formation with a front line of tough fighters and paladins, a center of vulnerable wizards and sorcerers, and a rear guard of combat-ready clerics and rangers. Combining a grid with D&D's turn-based combat system rips the formation apart. Our 4th Edition party's elvish cleric had a high Initiative due to his elvish Dexterity, so he often moved first. He would step forward six squares, past the front line. The monsters sometimes got to move next, so they would surround and hit the exposed cleric. When our fighters and paladins, who put their good stats into Strength rather than Dexterity, finally moved, they could not reform a protective line around the cleric because of the crowd of monsters. Our eldarin wizard also had a high Initiative, but given the cleric's example she would timidly lag behind in the back rather than step forward. She found few opportunities to use her Burning Hands spell.
Non-Adventure Roleplaying
Fourth Edition has powers for combat and skills for obstacles, and that is all. The character's non-adventure abilities are completely blank, unless they can be forced into the skill system. Can a ranger hunt for food? Yes, that would be a Nature skill. Can he clean and cook the catch afterwards? Um, that's not Nature, maybe it is Dungeoneering? The players will simply have to roleplay any attempt at everyday realism without formal rules. That is fine for the fun stuff, but the DM will have to rack his or her brains whenever the informal part could affect the formal part.
Conclusion
I find the increased simplicity of the character system and the increased complexity of the combat system an inexplicable contrast. Wizards of the Coast does not have their goals in order yet, except for the capitalistic goal of selling handbooks. Out of curiosity, I might buy whichever book that will add Bard and Druid classes back into the system. But for everything else, I am going to hold off to 4.5 Edition.